Study: Which head coaches truly “build a fence around the state”

Seemingly every single head coach that takes the podium at his introductory press conference talks about “building a fence around the state” to keep the most talented prospects from leaving the state to play their college football.

During the course of the long off season, one of the questions we threw around as a staff was; which current head coach (and his staff) are the best at keeping talent inside of the state borders? From there, FootballScoop intern-extraordinaire Joe Bowen dug into each roster that was returning a head coach for a fourth season.

Since the study included just taking a look at each roster, we did not determine how many walk-ons each roster included, but nonetheless, we came up with some interesting results.

Not surprisingly, Texas coaches dominated the top of the list. However, it was a bit surprising to find that the first head coach not from the talent rich states of Texas, California or Florida (who dominate the first 12 slots) was Central Michigan head coach Dan Enos, who narrowly (.01%) edged out Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer.

The first power five conference coach to make the list was Art Briles (82.29%), with Larry Coker topping the list of all coaches with nearly 90% of his players from coming inside of Texas. At the bottom of the list are Navy’s Ken Nuimatalolo followed by Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly, both of which recruit nationally and aren’t located in the richest of talent beds.

A couple of things, however obvious they may seem, are worth noting before diving into the numbers where you can draw your own conclusions:-A program like Notre Dame is going to have a much bigger national draw outside of the borders of Indiana than a program like North Texas.-A state like Texas obviously has enough talent to spread around…a few times over. Kansas and Nebraska don’t have that luxury. Here’s a look at where exactly college football talent comes from.

With those in mind, as a staff, we came to the following conclusions:– Geography plays a big role: Les Miles and LSU (62.5%) and Mark Hudspeth with Louisiana-Lafayette (51.04%), both located more towards the middle of the state have significantly more Louisiana players than Louisiana-Monroe’s Todd Berry (30.34%) where campus is closer to the border of Arkansas and Texas.– Miami’s percentage is a head scratcher: Florida programs run by FSU’s Jimbo Fisher (74%), UF’s Will Muschamp (68%) and UCF’s George O’Leary (68.67%) are near the top of the list, but Al Golden’s Miami program trails significantly (52.83%). That certainly clashes with the “Geography plays a big role” conclusion mentioned previously.

All programs from power five conferences (plus Notre Dame and BYU) have been bolded to make them easier to find.

*Only head coaches entering a minimum of their fourth year were included. We did this to ensure that the vast majority of the players on the roster were recruited by the current staff.